Watermelon. Defenders of this fruit place it on a pedestal up with the world’s great cultivars. In this pantheon with strawberries, mangos, and pineapples is where watermelon finds itself. I accept this as the truth.
I just don’t get why.
I don’t hate watermelon by any means, but the best thing that I can say about it is that it’s fine. Just okay. Mostly alright. It doesn’t offend me.
I think the best way to label watermelon is “crunchy water.”
Even when it’s “great watermelon”, whatever that means, it’s still just sort of blah. It’s not particularly high in any nutritional categories that matter, aside from some vitamin C and a lot of water. I guess if I was wandering through a desert and had no supplies and someone air-dropped a watermelon for me I’d be thankful, but that’s about it. It’s crunchy water.
Even when watermelon is utilized as a flavoring for other things, it doesn’t taste anything like real watermelon. It’s always an artificial watermelon flavor that has been improved through chemistry. Natural watermelon flavor just isn’t tasty enough for gum, Jolly Ranchers, or vodka.
Watermelon is fine. If you serve it to me, I’ll eat it. But if a killer fungus arrived to destroy all of the watermelon plants in the world, I wouldn’t mourn it. I would certainly mourn strawberries, mangos, and pineapples if something happened to them, but not watermelon.